So, it has not been a good week for us. Lots of irresponsible crappy people. We are on our 4th parvo pup in for treatment. Anyway, we received some news today that is a particularly hard blow.

Philly came to us from, well, Philly at 8 weeks with horrible mange. We've worked very hard (Kera!) getting him healthy again, and 3 months later he received a clean skin scrape finally! We had noticed off and on that he had a limp but it seemed to get better as the mange healed. He went in for x-rays today after a hairy episode with a set of stairs. He has stage 4 hip dysplasia in his right hip and stage 2 in his right. There is also some stuff going on with his knees but doesn't seem to be as concerning. He's 6 months old

Obviously we are looking at surgery but can anyone share their experiences with this type of surgery?

We did an FHO in a 2yr old dog with severe hip dysplasia. He actually recovered really well as far as his hips go, his owners didn't even give him pain meds half the time because they thought the pain meds were making him sick at home. He was a very scared dog, like his owners bought him off of a reservation, he was very bonded to the owners but wary of strangers. We had to take him out every few hours and move his legs around for physical therapy/ice his hips too. He did really well being handled all the time and actually got more used to the clinic and started trusting us more to handle him. He's the kind of dog that just pees all over and shuts down. He made a 100% recovery and is back to chasing cars down the road only this time he's pain free.

Also just to mention they did try a round of adequan before surgery but his hips just got worse over time.

Since you mention hip replacement I knew a dog who had two titanium hips. She seemed to function well with them, I'm not sure how the recovery or surgery was because I didn't see it. Lymphoma ended up taking her unfortunately at 4yrs of age

Okay, I had a feeling that's what it was. My vet mentioned that they don't normally do those in dogs his size, he's not big now but he could be potentially be a good size. I don't know, I'm eager to see what the specialist has to say.

Jet [the dog we did it on] is like 50lbs but obviously done growing... although I'm curious how a total replacement would work in a growing dog as well? The bone probably just grows around it?

Would you maybe wait on surgery until he's at least a year? Also after Jet had his surgery he did have some muscle loss and walk kind of weird... like someone mentioned in the lab thread it's definitely not aesthetically pleasing compared to the total hip replacement.

It will depend on his level of pain. The vet says it doesn't appear to be bothering him (except when he tries to tackle stairs!) so if we can wait until he grows more, we will. Whatever the best course of action for him will be, we will follow it.

LMM wrote:It will depend on his level of pain. The vet says it doesn't appear to be bothering him (except when he tries to tackle stairs!) so if we can wait until he grows more, we will. Whatever the best course of action for him will be, we will follow it.

I'm not sure they could do a Total Hip Replacement on a pup, I think it would have to be an FHO. Because if the acetabulum ("socket") continues to grow then the new femoral head, which is now metal, couldn't grow with it and then you have permanently dislocated hips. I don't know that for sure, just my educated guess.

yeah I'm thinking with a pup they'd probably be going for a FHO, too. I don't know for sure but it would seem like the best option. Hopefully you can wait until he is done growing!

My dog has HD, but I'm not sure what "stage" it would be. The radiographic specialist who looked at the xray said "mild" and "moderate". Given some of his life-long behavior and gait, we're pretty sure he has been dysplastic most of his life, I only really "found out" 3 years ago and then a bunch of stuff kind of came together as to why he did this or that.

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day, tomorrow doesn't look good either.
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"You didn't know of the magical powers of the break stick? It's up there with genies and Harry Potter as far as magic levels go." SisMorphine 01/07/07

End of February Doogie had a Femoral Head excision. He has virtually nothing in his rear hips..no ball, no socket...within a couple of days he was toe touching and within a few days after that he was bearing a bit of weight.

I opted to not do the hip replacement because of a) it's expensive, b) he was young and was then and still is growing.

We will probably have to do the other hip eventually. I'm hoping it will wait about a year to let the first hip completely heal and build muscle.